There is hope for this world yet

[fpb]

The internet cafe where I go in the long wait for a phone line of my very own has a regular clientele of teen-agers who spend hours playing videogames. I am used to hearing them discuss their strategies and results aloud and with occasionally salty language.

Of course this language is mostly of the modern street variety, anything from "gay" to "motherf..."

Except that just now, a very small black lad right near me has used the literate, Popeian insult "dunce".

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

No. But you may have noticed the comment from someone else who was with me at that same cafe, who does know about games, and who thinks the one these kids play is terrible. In general, the atmosphere games present, the way they are sold to people, remind me of the worst side of comics. I am a cartoonist, and a superhero cartoonist at that, but the ads for anything from GRAND THEFT AUTO to World War Two re-enactments remind me of everything I tried to avoid in my own work. Now this proves nothing - advertising is one thing and product is another - but it has done nothing to encourage me to try it.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

I do think that you are stereotyping.
To do so is natural, human, and inescapable. We all do it, and I think that one unfortunate tendency of current trends in discourse on stereotype is that stereotypy is presented as a failing of the unworthy few, as opposed to a human tendency which is a fundamental part of how the brain works.

The little black boy lies at the intersection :-) of at least two areas of relative unfamiliarity for you, doesn't he?

I, however, come from a world in which the word "dunce" is completely unremarkable as a synonym for "fool". More humorous for us would have been "miscreant".

There are certainly good games and bad games, as with any other medium. Grand Theft Auto is in general a well-designed series, but its constant pandering to stereotype is somewhat wearying.

Do you listen to much rap?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Oh for Heaven's sake. You really are set on fitting me up for a racist. The little black boy might as well have been white or Chinese or Indian or Arabic, I see them all at that cafe, playing the same games. Now either you stop using every twisted sort of way to find racism in what I say, or I ask you to take yourself out of my blog. I allow anyone to come in and comment, but I am the ultimate arbiter of what stays in - and insults against myself do not stand much of a chance.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

You recently apologised for misunderstanding me.
If that apology was indeed sincere, can we change the current direction of this exchange and work towards greater understanding instead?

I did not accuse you of racism. Even if I had, though, why should such a statement be grounds for my eviction?